Wednesday, September 16, 2015

When I coined the GamerGate hashtag on Twitter, I had no idea what
would follow, but I’m very pleased with the result. For over a year,
gamers have been pushing back against a new wave of political
correctness, media spin, and cultural authoritarianism. Propagandists
tried to declare gamers “dead” — in response, gamers became their worst
nightmare.

Despite the atrocious things said about them in the mainstream media,
gamers have survived, thrived, and conquered. They detest censorship,
language-policing, and the prioritization of politics over good
storytelling. Everyone who believes in creative freedom should support
them.

NICK FLORAssociate Professor, Anderson School of Management, University of New Mexico

I see GamerGate as the best modern example of how a false narrative can be socially engineered by coordinating the five C’s:

1. Confirmation Bias, leading to the cherry picking of only data that supports one’s position;

5. Collectivism, justifying outrage and action for the “greater good.”

So what is GamerGate? From my one year of observation and interaction on Twitter, it’s simple: gamers pushing for free enterprise and free markets in the gaming industry; gamers asking for a competitive market free of collusion, free of corruption, and free of control of artistic creativity by authoritarians. In short, GamerGate is a freedom movement.

IAN MILES CHEONGEditor-in-Chief, GameRanx

Ask any gamer or anyone within the game industry what GamerGate means to them and you might get a variety of answers, depending on who you ask.

Over the course of the year, my stance towards the GamerGate movement has shifted. Having initially bought into the “social justice”-approved narrative that all of GamerGate was about the harassment of women, I used to be violently opposed to the movement and engaged in demonizing its supporters, who consist mainly of gamers—including women.

Most gamers don’t much care for political correctness, and the way they speak has been deliberately misinterpreted as bigotry by social justice proponents whose biggest source of angst comes from microaggressions.

The narrative is false, and it’s one I see propped up time and time again to discredit anyone who dissents against what I’d call “social authoritarianism.”

I wasn't asked my opinion, but had I been, this is what I would have said:

Vox DayGame Designer

#GamerGate marks an important turning in the cultural war for the soul of the West. It was our cultural Stalingrad. It was our Midway. It marked the first time in decades that a group of individuals collectively stood up against the ongoing SJW onslaught and turned it back.

Gaming, a dangerous business because most games have a quantifiable outcome. A didactic outcome, someone wins, someone loses, someone has 10,000 points, another has 5x that. Quantifiable, comparable, the machine does not give anyone an advantage for sex, race, or political allegiance... Unlike many universities that have decided to get rid of their only objective measure, the standardized test... I guess quantitative easing has come to the College Board.

#GamerGate marks an important turning in the cultural war for the soul of the West. It was our cultural Stalingrad. It was our Midway. It marked the first time in decades that a group of individuals collectively stood up against the ongoing SJW onslaught and turned it back.

I've noticed a change in aGG tactics. They're semi-going along with GG while simultaneously trying to factionalize it, break off elements, sow dissent from within the ranks. It's like, "what are these people doing in gamergate? they're not gamers."

#GamerGate marks an important turning in the cultural war for the soul of the West. It was our cultural Stalingrad. It was our Midway. It marked the first time in decades that a group of individuals collectively stood up against the ongoing SJW onslaught and turned it back.

That it was. And who fought, when institution after institution had folded, while all the supposed defenders of liberty either kept silent, ran for cover, or joined the enemy?

Gamers.

Despised, mocked, lacking in any of the status or privilege lefties like to point to, and vastly underestimated, gamers fought. Fought and won.

And ohhh the left knows it. The cold, biting-fresh feeling of change is in the air.

I have no direct connection to or interest in gaming, but I enthusiastically support this movement. I've seen the parallels in my own profession, as assorted SJWs and SJ-inspired troublemakers try to disrupt and influence. I work every day with two things, electricity and trees, that have zero appreciation for politics, nuance or feelgood. My sincere thanks to all of the folks here, and to Vox, for the excellent discussions, insight and boost to my morale. Fight on.

Muslim kid “invents” a briefcase sized 120 VAC powered digital clock in 2015 (when you can buy a programmable clock chip for a couple of bucks from Mouser). Obama celebrates Muslim kid’s contribution to science. You just can’t make this stuff up.Zuckborg and Bath House Barry want 14yo moslem boy to visit them.http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2015/09/16/texas-teen-takes-briefcase-clock-to-school-creates-a-stir/

Muslim kid “invents” a briefcase sized 120 VAC powered digital clock in 2015 (when you can buy a programmable clock chip for a couple of bucks from Mouser). Obama celebrates Muslim kid’s contribution to science. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Even better. It's a COTS clock he dissembled and put inside a pencil box. Behold, the SCIENCE of appropriating ancient American technology!

"According to Irving police, Ahmed's case contained a digital clock that the student had taken apart and rearranged."

For all the talk of "priviledge", who is more priviledged that a bunch of pasty San Francisco trust-fund babies? The industry that resisted the likes of Jack Thompson wasn't going to let such scum tell them what to do.

Meanwhile, on Progressive land, most of them believe that the backlash is coming from old Rush Limbaugh listeners. They are completely clueless.

To anyone who has no idea what GamerGate was, Vox's book, SJWs Always Lie, gives a great summary and play by play. Thanks for explaining what you did to the Hugo Awards as well. How can I help you push back during the 2016 awards?

Not to mention, the lack of hobbit rings meant that the One Ring didn't have the same power over them. As hard as it was for Frodo, no human, elf or dwarf could've resisted it that well or that long. Sauron overlooked the hobbits to his doom (puns intended).

@41 I'm pretty sure the One Ring only had that level of special power over actual Ring-wielders? If there's had been hobbit rings, the wielders would have come to dominate the hobbity things like pipeweed smoking and goofing off, and Sauron would have held sway over the hobbits indirectly by controlling the ones with rings. It's the master of rings, not the master over individuals whose species had rings created for them.

> Vox, it looks like someone's gone and pirated SJWs Always Lie and put the download links on 8ch.net.

You know, somehow I don't think Vox will consider this a catastrophe. :)

Oh, and completely off topic on this thread, but for those who have been following my unemployment situation, I just got a new job today that's a lot closer to home than my old one. I start this coming Monday.

I'd like to thank everyone for their well wishes and any prayers offered. Given my complete lack of skills in looking for work, I'm absolutely certain that they played a big role in the outcome.

What the fuck are you talking about? Are ... are you talking about Faramir from the benighted movies?Manwe wept.

Hey, they made some changes, but they were mostly for the better. Aragorn is a lot more relatable now that he's not quite so much of a super-confident born-leader. Arwen kicking ass was cool; the story really needed more strong female characters.

Talking of which, remember when Eowyn took off her helmet and shook her hair around for a while before stabbing the enemy, who just stood there for a while watching? That made sense.

Hey, they made some changes, but they were mostly for the better. Aragorn is a lot more relatable now that he's not quite so much of a super-confident born-leader. Arwen kicking ass was cool; the story really needed more strong female characters.

@ Carl Philipp: "I'm pretty sure the One Ring only had that level of special power over actual Ring-wielders?"

That's not how I remember it, but I do a lot of interpolation when I read a book and it's been more years since I re-read the books than since I saw the movies. My memory holds that the racial rings gave power over the race, so the One Ring got power over the race too through that.

Three times per minute seems to be about the upper limit on posting, and that only by using a copy…paste text and foregoing the name drop down menu. A thousand ways to subdue such a clown and to assist him in receiving the proper, geographically-local attention.

What I've seen in the last year is that the people who identify- e.g. on Twitter - as GamerGaters, are infinitely more likely to be rational and tolerant of diverse opinions, than others who claim to be diversity advocates. They're far more likely to be open to logical and moral suasion.

Even as they fight like rabid ferrets over minutiae I couldn't care less about, amongst themselves, they have comported themselves well as a group.

This is our Tobruk. Rommel's seemingly unstoppable march across Africa was halted not by the supposed elite of the allied forces but by the ill disciplined Australian forces nobody took seriously. They dug in and held out against an unrelenting siege, took their enemies insults as a badge of honour ("The Rats of Tobruk") and showed that the German army was not invincible.

In the culture war nobody took gamers seriously, whether conservative or leftist. The cuckservatives expected them to fold. The SJWs expected to steam roll them. Instead they've held against an unrelenting siege.

He was noble enough to attempt the quest, but not so noble that he'd try to use the ring for good.

He was able to lead and inspire, so that Solid Hobbits like Sam would follow him to the mouth of Hell.

He was forgiving, so that he was able to get the assistance of Gollum, snd even almost saved him. (Tolkien stated that, had Gollum not been betrayed, he really would have been saved. He would still have stolen the ring at the end, because the ring was too strong to resist, but he would have then leapt into the lava of his own accord, out of love for Frodo.)

Are you aware that Wikipedia unequivocally identifies #Gamergate as a campaign of harassment directed against feminists in the gaming industry?

I'm not a gamer, and had not heard of #gamergate before today. I wanted to find out what it was. I "googled" it (well, I "binged" it. Hard "g".) I found the Wiki article first. I read the intro.

That's about as far as most people will get. I know that Wikipedia is run by dishonest leftists, so I researched further and found this article. I'm just getting started; I try to be thorough. But most people won't do that.

Understand that one of the characteristics of Social Justice Warriors is that they never consider an incident to be over. I got reminded of this just yesterday, when a friend of mine who happens to be a hard leftist posted a picture of Dick Cheney and called for his prosecution as a war criminal. Cheney hasn't been in the news for 8 years. Apparently he was the subject of somebody's "Daily Hate" (see "1984," "Emmanuel Goldstein.")

The point is, if you think you've won #gamergate, you just might find that your victory vanishes into the narrative, and that history will regard it as a war against women. Leftists manage this by perpetuating their recitation of the narrative long after everybody else has lost interest.

Keep fighting, but don't lose sight of the fact that the Bad Guys have a built-in meme-repeating machine that could easily bury your victory under a pile of lies.

Post a Comment

Rules of the blogPlease do not comment as "Anonymous". Comments by "Anonymous" will be spammed.